If you've been on the club ride around Spring Lake to Fruitland Park then at the end of Cut Off Road you will have turned left on Pine Ridge Dairy Road. Twenty years ago if you had turned right instead of left it would have led you to the Pine Ridge Dairy Farm.
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| Pine Ridge Dairy Farm 2010 |
For over 50 years, Bernice Ellen Jeffcoat tended herds of Holsteins on her nearly 1,000 acre farm passing long days from early morning milking to evening roundups. It was a tough but noble life which got tougher with the consolidation of the dairy industry. But Bernice loved the land and her cattle and although losing money she hung on until the end. When she passed away in 2006 at the age of 81 the farm was still her home.
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| Pine Ridge Village 2024 |
Later on The Villages was able to purchase a tract of the farm which it has named Pine Ridge Village and I remember the construction of Moyer Loop in 2015. Of course the loop was strictly prohibited to non construction traffic at the time but one day Dave Rooney posted a ride around it on Strava, he may have been the first. Since then we've all cycled around the loop many times. The next time around the loop, just west of Webster Way, you will pass right through the site of the Pine Ridge Dairy barn and may sense the aura of the cattle that were milked there for 50 years.